In Defence Of Mantra

I decided to write this article In Defense of Mantra as response to a post on Stephen Sashen’s  blog called Mantra power from Sweden. The gist of what he says is that there is no difference between having the words of a pop song going round and round in your head and repeating Sanskrit mantras.

In the  comments that followed many people agreed and accepted this idea.  I myself left a comment on several occasions, they were never published, so no other perspectives are obviously welcome there!

Here is why I think there is a difference.

First let’s look out the nature of sound and words, in fact the nature of all things. On a fundamental level everything that exists is a vibration of energy. This is no longer a mystical point of view but is the accepted science of new physics.

Sound is created by the vibration of air in a particular pattern, and words themselves have their own vibrational pattern even as writing. The power of this has been clearly demonstrated in the groundbreaking work of Masaro Emoto. For those unfamiliar with his work he developed a

methodology of photographing water crystal. In the development of his work Mr Emoto started taping different words onto philes of water and then photographed the water crystals that the water formed. What he found was that each word formed a unique crystal who’s shape and structure reflected the nature of the word placed on the phile.

water crystal of love                      Adolf Hitler

Mr Emoto found that some words like love, soul, beautiful,  formed complex, intricate and well balanced crystals, while words like demon, devil, dirty and even "do it" formed crystals that were misshapen, incoherent and fractured. His later experiments exposing water to different types of music and people’s names with the same kinds of results, in the crystal shape reflecting on the nature of the music or the name. Heavy metal music and the name Adolf Hitler for example creating fractured and incoherent crystals, while mother Theresa and the music of Mozart created well formed complex and intricate crystals.

There is also a subtler level to the vibration or energy of Mantras specifically when it is given to you. In these circumstances the mantra also carries a connection to the  energy of the person that gave it to you. So for example if the mantra was given to you  buy a Sat Guru or an enlightened one, then the mantra becomes a means of connecting to their consciousness. Equally a song carries some connection to the energy of the person who wrote it and sings it.

My own experience of being given a mantra by Amma, who is something even beyond a Sat Guru, was that the mantra was literally alive when she spoke it in my ear. Don’t really know how to explain it better than it was alive, but hopefully it conveys in that moment the words had a quality that was more than just sound.

There are many things from Eastern spiritual practices that not make sense to the rational mind of the Western world, mantras and mudras to name just two. Is this because they don’t do anything and are meaningless or that we are just incapable of sensing and feeling their effect? My own feeling is often it is the latter.

About 13 years ago I stopped being able to listen to music that had words  other than religious or spiritual music, and for many years didn’t. Even now, the time I can spent listening to other types of music with lyrics is limited. It just doesn’t feel good, my mantra though is a friend for life.

Technorati Tags: Mantra, mantra meditation, Sanskrit mantras, Spirituality

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